The Many Moneys of Neverwinter

I have played a lot of games; many of the MMOs I’ve played have been the standard old fashioned subscription games. Recently, I’ve gotten into more free to play MMORPG. I can comfortably say that I have played MMO’s that have you pay for everything, or pay for luxuries, or pay to be/have the best stuff.

Neverwinter has, by far, the most convoluted and complicated economic system in any game I have ever played. If there is one major failing of Neverwinter, it’s the many various levels of currency in the game for every one of their needlessly complicated divided classes of items and gear.

You can basically play ALL of Neverwinter, which is cool, but you will soon realize that there is little to no way to get around dropping at least a little cash on the game if you want to get your hands into every piece of Neverwinter. You will see what I mean.

To get an idea, there is a separate inventory tab that is totally devoted to nothing but the different currencies in the game. Seriously, this is ridiculous. Yes, it’s necessary due to the many different types of money, but they really shouldn’t be in the game in the first place.

Well, let’s learn about them so we can figure out how to use them!

Gold, Silver, and Copper Money

This is the traditional RPG money that you will find in the vast majority of MMO’s. This is familiar to most gamers. There are different conversion rates in different games but in Neverwinter it is 100 to 1. So you need 100 copper pieces to equal 1 silver piece, and 100 silver pieces to equal 1 gold piece.

You will use this batch of currency for your basic supplies and to buy the cheapest of amenities like companions and mounts.

You can buy kits to farm crafting resources, potions of healing,buffing, and low grade gear including low grade companions.

How to Earn Gold, Silver, and Copper

The primary source of obtaining this currency is by killing enemies and taking what they drop.

You can also earn this money through selling the gear that drops. Make sure to identify everything you can, even if you can’t use it, because you will get lots more for selling it if it is identified.

You will also earn some as a reward for quests.

Astral Diamonds

This is the real, worthwhile currency in the game. Having lots of astral Diamonds will open up a lot of different and better gear and items for you. Astral Diamonds are used for all of the major purchases in the game.

Most character changes and gear tweaks are done through the use of astral diamonds. Here is a quick list of the big things you will need Astral Diamonds for.

Enchanting items

Disenchanting items

Buying Identify Scrolls to identify items.

Changing Feats

Changing Powers

Quick Training Companions

Speed up Crafting

90% of Player Trades are for AD

The main Auction House is in AD.

How to Earn Astral Diamonds

Run Daily quests. The rewards for completing these are a couple thousand astral diamonds each depending on the type of quest you are completing.

Daily Foundry Quest

Daily Skirmish Quests

Daily Dungeons Delves Quests

Daily Domination PVP Quests

Use Invocation Skill to pray to the Gods for Astral Diamonds. The best result for this is to use it once every 29.5 hours.

Leadership Profession can yield some raw Astral Diamonds but it is slow going.

Sell items on the Auction House.

Buy Astral Diamonds with Zen in the Astral Diamond Exchange.

Celestial Coins

These are basically frequent play rewards and are another subset currency. You get these from praying to the Cryptic gods for mercy and they may or may not toss you a pity coin. In other words, use your Invocation Skill at a campfire or a shrine you create with a Portable Altar.

Once every 30 hours you need to log in and use your Invocation Skill or your Celestial Coins will vanish.

With these coins you can get a few things;

A large party popper. This is a hand held firework. One time use. Lame.

Coffer of Wondrous Augmentation – This gives some item enchantments and often will give a ward.

Ideally you want to use the Invocation Skill once within the 30 hours. If you use it more often, it will become less and less effective which means greatly diminished rewards.

How to Earn Celestial Coins

Use your Invocation Skill at a Campfire.

Use your Invocation Skill at a Portable Altar.

Ardent Coins

You get Ardent Coins for using your Invocation Skill. Ardent Coins will not disappear until they are spent. Things you can do with these:

Purchase Seals.

Get buffs.

Get high quality weapons.

Get a few special pets.

Get an Angel of Protection (companion) for a whopping 360 Ardent Coins. That is once a day log in for about a year.

Use your Invocation Skill at a Campfire.

Use your Invocation Skill at a Portable Altar.

How to Earn Ardent Coins

Use your Invocation Skill at a Campfire.

Use your Invocation Skill at a Portable Altar.

Seals

To get some of the better gear and items in game you will need to collect the various Seals in the game from many different methods.

Seal of the Lion – 16th to 32nd Level Blue Magic Items

Seal of the Manticore – 38th and 42nd Level Blue Magic Items

Seal of the Pegasus – 49th to 55th Level Blue Magic Items

Seal of the Unicorn and Seal of the Drake – Level 60 Purple Magic Items

How to Earn Seals

You can earn or buy Seals through in game group content such as Dungeon Delves. This is a relatively quick way to earn Seals.

Defeating enemies of the particular seals level to collect bounties. Each area has its own bounties but it will take 40 of each bounty for one Seal of the same level. This is a slow way to earn seals but something you can do while soloing.

Trade in Ardent Coins for Seals.

Glory

Earn Glory in PVP battles to use to buy PVP specific gear.

Head into the Trade of Blades in Protectors Enclave to see what they have for sale. There are a ton of items. Some are good for just PVP while others are good for general play.

How to Earn Glory

Play PVP content. Stay until the end or you will not earn any Glory.

Tarmaline Trade Bars

These are bars you get from opening the special boxes that drop such as the purple Nightmare Lockboxes in Neverwinter. You can only open these with Enchanted Keys which you get from the store with Zen. When you open these you get some Tarmaline Trade Bars and one of the random items from inside.

It costs roughly 1 US dollar to open it. You will get 10-20 bars every time you open one. Items from this vendor range from 5 bars to 2500 bars. You can get some unique items and gear from these Tarmaline Trade Bars.

These little chests are an ingenious money maker I am sure. For a little money you can roll the dice and see if you get anything good. It’s basically legal gambling with real money for fake fantasy items, so be careful! They even have little world messages go out when people hit the jackpot by getting the nightmare steed. I say it is a little devious… hold on I need to buy another key…

Zen the Real Money

This is the currency that you get for spending real money on the Perfect World website.

After you purchase some Zen on the Perfect World website make sure you transfer the Zen to Neverwinter.

It is a translation of about 1 US dollar to 100 Zen when you are looking at real life prices on things.

If Neverwinter is like other free to play games they will run deals on Zen from time to time so keep an eye out for those and get your Zen at a discount.

How to Get Zen

Buy it on the Perfect World Website. They have lots of different options to pay which is nice.

Go to the Astral Diamond Exchange and sell your Astral Diamonds for Zen. There is a finite amount of transactions per day so if you do not see the deal you want try again the next day.

Go to the Perfect World Website and you can earn Zen by doing surveys, trying deals, and trying other offers they have. These are updated daily so check back every day.

Neverwinter Money Summary

So did you get all that? I hope I gave a good overview of the many different currency types in the game, what they are for and how to get them. It is way too convoluted in my opinion but that is how Cryptic wants to do it so we as players of Neverwinter have to learn it.

I think if you try to tackle one form of currency and then move on most players should be able to sort through what is for which and then manage their characters accordingly. Overall, Astral Diamonds are really the key to the economy. If you want to focus on one kind of currency in Neverwinter, it should be Astral Diamonds.

I found its best to get in the habit and rhythm of using my Invocation Skill once a day to get the best rewards. I keep my Mercenaries out on Leadership Professions for AD constantly, and I make it a priority to run the Daily quests. If I am lucky enough to get blue items that I cannot use, I make sure those go on the Auction House because someone is bound to buy them.

You should be able to earn enough Astral Diamonds to enjoy the game without having to toss any real world money at it. However, you will not get access to the best things unless you grind out tons of Astral Diamonds and sell them on the Exchange or toss some cash at Neverwinter. That is how all of these free to play games make money and it has become the norm. Overall you can do a great many things without spending much money. And honestly, I really don’t mind spending money on a good game.

2 Comments

Neutrino

October 11, 2017

Decent article. Couple of minor points.

Under Ardent Coins you have…
Use your Invocation Skill at a Campfire.
Use your Invocation Skill at a Portable Altar.
…listed as both things you can do with them and how to earn them. I’m guessing this is a typo.

For all the currencies you list what you can do with it, and how to get it. But for Zen you only mention how to get it and not what you can use it for.

Thanks for the suggestions. It’s been awhile since I wrote this. Could probably use a scrub and update.

You should be able to use the Invocation at either a campfire or portable altar to get you coins. If it is the right Invocation of the day to earn one.

Zen can be used to buy tons of things from the Zen store. Items, upgrades, companions, refining, stronghold items, as well as account services like bank space, a rename, etc. It can be purchased with cash. It can be earned through ARC. As well as you can get Zen by trading ingame Astral Diamonds for Zen.

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